IdyllopusPress Presents

I’ve been going through my files today looking for several pages of writing that I now fear are lost, probably dumped in one of my purges. But I found this, which I’d forgotten about, which I wrote a few years ago.

* * * * * *

Mom. I always find it refreshing when somebody can talk about how great and wonderful their mother is or was, without their demeanor causing me to sit up a little straighter, adrenalin-ready and alert for whatever the poor, sick bastard might happen to do next.

The last time I was around such an individual, I happened to be stuck on a band tour bus with him for four weeks. The first two days, we had the coach all to ourselves (and the driver) hauling across country to rendez-vous with the band in Minnesota. The bus was a steal of a cheap rental for the singer’s management (one of those singer, back-up band kind of things) because it was part of a fleet the interiors of which were scheduled to be redone. Dubbed the “disco” bus, the decoration recalled (or maybe it didn’t recall at all, maybe it was just that old) an era that’s about as horrific as all that plutonium in Washington State dribbling out of its containment area, threatening the Columbia River. Disco is the someone you throw a really good wake for because you’re glad they’re gone, but they mistake it as a loving tribute and several years down the road you feel a tap on your shoulder, turn around, and there’s Burt Reynolds dressed up in his ice cream man suit asking you to dance. “Go away,” you say, “go away.” He laughs and trundles out the disco bus. “Come ride with me in my traveling, nuclear-powered Serendipity carriage! Step with me, Alice, through the wall-to-wall vanity mirrors carved with flamingos–or that mirror on the ceiling ringed with tracer lights that actually conceals a Star Trekian cosmic generator–into the eternal never-never, the angelic trills of BeeGees escorting us on shimmering comet hair to Heaven’s Gate.” The walls, counters, cupboards, blinds, carpet and sleeping area were all varying shades of dark gray and the seating upholstered in blue-violet-black velveteen. What I didn’t get was why both pillars that framed the entrance behind the driver’s seat were black; had one been white we could have held Thelemic rituals.

All I had to do was step on the bus and I’d be ready to fall asleep; it wasn’t a place for living.

So when I roused from road stupor it would often be when the bus was bouncing into another 24 hour truck stop. Tug on boots and a jacket, run a brush through my hair, grab a few dollars for something to eat and find a real toilet instead of the bus’ pee-only chemical toilet. Living on a bus, you always look like you’re just crawling out of bed. And live on it we did thanks to a few greedy someones who said one couldn’t believe how much money was saved not getting hotel rooms for the band. If anyone wanted to shower they were told they could do it at the gig.

The particular night I’m thinking about, we have pulled into a small globe of white light hollowed out of the Minnesota wilderness. Nothing wants to linger on those plains to stop the Canadian wind and it is freezing. Beyond the feeble arc of incandescence there is blank black. I’m in Roman Polanski’s mind. And a truck stop is no place to regather any sense of reality. They’re a fluorescent shock fibrillating raw echoing noises off all that tile that must be really easy to hose down. I habitually donned my sunglasses as a defense against the nasty light and the leers, and always wondered why in the world anyone would ogle a forty-one year old woman carrying a baby on her hip, especially one who looked like she’d been shaken about in the mouth of a mad dog for the past 48 hours.

I’m a night person, have always been. I find night hours comforting; they’re a good time for thinking and writing. But at 3 AM in a truck stop everyone, without exception, is a roach escaping from the kitchen light.

The driver, this man who loves momma and I step inside. All heads turn. The eyes of a very hairy, burly guy rest with intent interest on this man who loves momma, and he makes a motion and steps into the bathroom. This man who loves momma is now about to bond with my back like I’m his opossum mother. “Did you see that?” he asks, voice wavering. “What was that about?” I think he’s got to be kidding but instead mumble, “Dunno,” because I’m so freaked-out by all the tile and the light and the people after being so long ensconced in the disco coffin. The man who loves momma, his voice high and thin, whispers, “This is creepy. Stay close to me.”

Real substance inside a truck stop has a slogan on it or a lewd joke; food is the after-thought and damned if you’ll find any, so grab a package of cellophane-something which doesn’t look like it’ll kill you outright, pay for your cup of scorched coffee and get out of there, back on the dark refuge of Dante’s bus. Limbo-land, as it may be, it is home.

I’m sitting there and here climbs back on the man who loves his momma. Sits down next to me. He’s got a clear Mason jar full of big cherry-red jawbreakers. What’s up with those?

The previous tour, all day and all night he watched Andy Griffith tapes, and has been holed up in the rear lounge doing so again, because that’s what he does. One of the major pieces of furniture in his life. The bus is so loud you can’t hear the tape, but it doesn’t matter because he knows every line of dialogue. Old Andy, he can tell you all about old Andy, and Floyd, oh yes that Floyd gets him every time and he’ll start to tell you a story but always break it off to slap the bunk, hoop and hollar at an upcoming line of dialogue, and exclaim, “Isn’t that just like old Floyd? Now, isn’t that just like old Floyd?!”

But now we are alone, the driver is still inside the truck stop, I can hear the Andy Griffith tape running in the back lounge of the bus, and the man who loves momma has it in for me for some reason, and he’s going to sit next to me and stare me in the eyes in a peculiarly fixed but distant manner so that when I refuse to look away what I see is like looking down a dark tunnel in that 50′s movie about the giant ants. It’s not a matter of you going in to meet them, because you’re both on the same bus; in the same sewer system, you can hear the giant ants chirruping. But you don’t want to be seen by the ants which means you stay hidden around the corner from them, and watch their movements by way of the shadows of their antennae on the wall.

The man who loves his momma stares me in the eyes, pops a big cherry-red jawbreaker in his mouth and starts going on, out of the blue, in his sooooo looooong Southern drawl with its endless vowels about how much he loves his momma, and how much he loves his jawbreakers.

You know, he tells me, staring me in the eyes, most men are ashamed to call their momma momma, but not him. And he’s not ashamed to sit on her lap either. He’ll just plop right down in her lap, ’cause she’s his momma. His Momma! Who’s closer to you in your life than your momma? Your momma is the one who looks after you, at least his momma looked after him. And he loves his jawbreakers too. Do I want one? No, he knows they’re not good for you–and he holds the Mason jar up in front of my face. Do I see all those jawbreakers? See all those jawbreakers? He’ll have eaten every single one of them by morning, yes he will. It’s terrible for him, isn’t it, he says. Horrible. Bad as can be, but he’s got to do it. Gotta do it. Horrible for his teeth, but he has to eat all those jawbreakers until there’s not a single one left. It’s always like that; always has been. And he has always loved his momma, and she’s always loved him. He’s the youngest and his daddy’s jealous of him and doesn’t understand the relationship he has with his momma, and his brothers are jealous of him, but she’s his momma and he’s her baby boy. “Can’t stop eating these jawbreakers.”

“Mmmm,” I smile vaguely and nod. “Mmmm.”

“I’m my momma’s baby boy. Have I told you that?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think that’s strange?”

“Noooo.”

“I watch Andy Griffith all the time, have you noticed that?”

“Yeah, I know you watch Andy Griffith all the time.”

“Oh, I do. Every year I make a pilgrimage to the town that’s supposed to be Mayberry. Its not. It’s not Mayberry, you know. Not really. They didn’t film there. But I go every year. They know me there.”

“Mmmm, they do.”

“I thought I was doing real good with this woman last night, she was really into me, but then she made a joke about my leather biker’s jacket. I’ve been devastated. This is a real biker’s jacket, you know. You know? The real thing. Expensive. Real expensive. Look at the tag, see? Real.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“Not just some punk fake. What she did had me so upset I was shaking. Literally shaking. Because if I know how to do anything, I’ve always known how to dress cool, you know how important clothes are to me. And what she said, it like to totally destroyed my confidence. I thought I looked so cool, man. I knew I looked cool, and here she was coming down on me. I don’t look like a fag, do I? Not that I care who thinks I’m queer. I have a lot of gay friends, but I’m not. I love women. I’m a dog around women. D-o-g, dawg. Can’t get enough. My father and my brothers think it’s queer I’m so particular about how I look, and how I love my momma. But you gotta love your momma, you just gotta love your momma, and I like to wear nice things. Yes, ma’am, you know I like to dress impeccable, what’s wrong with that. But people think there’s something odd about it when a man pays that much attention to how he looks, when it’s that important to him. I’m always thinking about what I”m going to wear.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

“Did I tell you I’m a momma’s boy and I’m not ashamed of it?”

“Yes.”

“I bet you think I’m strange, don’t you? I am strange, you know. Really. Really, strange. Do you think I’m strange?”

Because things had gotten very weird, I said, “I don’t think anything about it.”

“I am strange. I’ll prove to you how strange I am. Do you know anyone else who would eat a whole jar of jawbreakers? I’m a compulsive, compulsive about everything. Can’t stop. Look at me, I’ve finished with a jawbreaker and now I’m going to pop another one in my mouth. Isn’t that awful? Don’t you think that’s awful? But you wait and see, by daylight there won’t be a single one of these jawbreakers left. Do you believe me? I bet you don’t believe me, do you?”

“No, I believe you.”

It was around then that one of his teeth broke in two.

When you’re on tour, and in Minnesota one night and in Chicago the next, and in Maine the next, you don’t have much time to find a dentist.

I’m not sure what was up with him, but we didn’t speak much the rest of the tour.

* * * * * *

By the way, Marty tells me Jawbreaker Guy is, these many years later, doing just fine. And I’m glad to hear it. He was actually quite a lot of fun to be around before everyone on the bus started going crazy.

Originally uploaded by eman59.

The photo to the side isn’t mine. It’s by Eman59, whose photography I’m following at Flickr right now. I love the photo, which is universal (for all who’ve interacted with a box office window), but it also reminded me of a job I once had.

Post pop-psychedelia, a movie theater opened in Augusta that was designed to please lovers of Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange” and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In”. The walls were glossy white with bold stripes in neon pinks and oranges. The scattered seating that sparely ran along the walls from the minor bow to a lobby to the rear refreshment area was all crayola colored, velveteen ottomans wanting bongs and Nehru jackets retrieved from moth balls. And appropriately, in probably record setting time, post pop-mod theater went from fresh, lemony, strawberry new to greasy seedy.

When the theater had just opened, which must have been about 1974, and was still hopeful, eager as a Freshman college student, Marty and I went to a film there, which is the only time I remember going to see a film there (though we went to see a few others, I’m sure). I don’t recollect what the film was. I only recollect that Steve Morse (Dixie Grit, Dixie Dregs, Steve Morse Band, Deep Purple, Kansas) was there with a date, and I decided I didn’t like him. But then I’ve usually not cared much for lead singers and guitarists and he struck me as already succumbing to starry mentality. Marty had gone to school with Steve and had played with him a little early on, whereas I was in high school with one of Steve’s brothers, who was a fine musician in his own right, and always struck me as an awfully nice guy. So Marty knew them both (and Steve’s older brother, a percussionist), whereas I’d only known Steve’s younger brother. Marty had told me all about how great Steve was and a nice person but when I met him I intuited Ego from ten paces and immediately sensing it I pretty much veered around and walked in the other direction.

For all I know he was just like me, in as, eventual friends divulging, “At first, I thought you were scary/always angry/hostile! But you’re not like that at all.”

In other words, I don’t mean to be ragging on Steve here. I don’t know him. I’m just giving what *I* felt at the time, which was a gut feeling that he could happily do without meeting me, and that not-much-of-a-meeting is the one memory I retain of Post Pop Theater Palace in its prime, most likely because I heard about Steve Morse for years, Marty knowing different people who played with him. Plus, in Augusta, Steve was already a music legend. We still have a couple copies of the way early Dixie Grit demo LP.

A year later, when I was eighteen, I found myself in one of those jobs that college kids tend to pick up, which would last only for several days and had me back at Post Pop Theater Palace, not working at it but hired by the chain or something to sit in at the theater and examine how it was run, and be present every night when receipts were counted up, and recount and sign for them and take them to the bank.

How I got the job, I don’t remember, and didn’t have any clue really what to do, armed with only a daily record sheet with different items I was supposed to check off, things like how clean were the lobby and bathrooms.

By now, Post Pop Theater Palace had gone to total seed, its dreams of hip dashed. Its aura was rotted Disco, when Disco was still big. One could feel the heady monetary draw of triple X rated features in a not-so-distant future that would never be reached only because of lack of initiative. Sporting two then-medium-size screens, on one of them was probably a PG feature, while running on the other was an R. Lynn Redgrave in “The Happy Hooker”, a Cannon Film, which to me was so off-puttingly lowbrow that I only ducked in once, for less than five minutes.

I tried to do my job. I sat in the ticket booth while the ticket collector collected tickets, and I could tell the ticket collector didn’t want me there, and the ticket collector kept telling me I really didn’t have to do that part of my job. But I did it anyway. And though I was sitting in the booth with the ticket collector, the ticket collector made me feel like Eman’s photo, like I had dared to attempt to infiltrate the rear workings of the carnival, and that it wasn’t appreciated. The ticket collector wanted me outside, on the other side of the glass.

I wandered the theater during the films, looking over the projectionist (I was supposed to make sure he wasn’t sleeping) and checking on general cleanliness.

And at night I sat in the office and at first I counted the money, like I was supposed to, each night the manager telling me I really didn’t have to do that part of my job, that it wasn’t expected of me to do that part of my job. And I took the money to the bank drop-off, though the manager kept telling me I didn’t have to do that part of my job, that it wasn’t expected of me to do that part of my job.

For some reason I had the idea this was one of THE reasons for my being there, to oversee the receipts at the end of the day. I don’t recollect why I had that impression but I must have talked to someone over the phone and been told something about the job. There had been no personal interview. I had been hired cold based on recommendations made by others.

I had a check sheet to go by. Had I sat in the ticket booth and monitored ticket sales? Check. Had I watched the counting of the money at the end of the night? Had I then counted the money myself? Had I placed the money, myself, in its deposit bag? Had I dropped off the money myself? Check, check, check.

By the weekend, though, I’d given up. As I figured it, I didn’t have much choice.

“You really don’t have to do this part of the job. They don’t expect you to do this,” the manager had said, planting himself between me and the deposit bag, come Friday night. And as he was decidedly decisive about it not being part of my job, and as I was eighteen and not much inclined to tussle with him over the deposit bag, I backed off and let him make the deposit on Friday. I didn’t sign for having made the deposit myself.

Weekdays, the theaters had been nearly empty. Weeknights had been a bit better. The real business was, of course, had Friday and Saturday.

On Saturday night the manager wouldn’t even let me count the money. “It’s going to be a long, long night,” he said when the theater had shut down. “There’s no point in your staying. We’re just fine here.”

I sat down in the office anyway, to watch the counting of the receipts.

“I told you, It’s going to be a long, long night,” the manager said again.

“It’s all right, it’s my job,” I said, and remained seated.

The manager stood, pleasantly smiling. “It’s going to be several hours before I count the money, and I can’t ensure your safety with that amount of money that late at night.”

I remained seated but by now didn’t know what to say. Finally, I reiterated, “It’s my job.”

The manager stopped smiling.

“It’s not your job. I keep telling you, they don’t expect you to do this, all they ever expected you to do was make sure the movies start on schedule. Now, I’m not going to get around to counting the receipts for several hours. That will put you leaving very late. You never know what might happen, and I’m not going to be responsible for your safety.”

The manager then smiled again.

Though I felt like I was irresponsibly abandoning my job, I decided to leave rather than press the matter. It just seemed like the thing to do.

“Now if you’ll sign…”

I declined to sign the sheet.

My memories are fuzzy about it all, and I’m paraphrasing, but then it was a fuzzy place and I felt like it wanted to keep me as fuzzy as possible.

It had not been a pleasant job.

The one memory that has stayed securely with me, kind of like how oatmeal is supposed to stick with you when a cold cereal won’t, was my 9th grade science teacher purchasing a ticket for “The Happy Hooker”. I’d liked him when I was school, because he’d put up with me, was what I considered to be fair, and so I never had a reason to give him a hard time. He didn’t recognize me and I didn’t run out of the ticket booth exclaiming, “Hi, Mr. So-and-so! Remember me? You taught me in 9th grade!” He was buying, after all, a ticket to “The Happy Hooker”, and though he didn’t look embarrassed, he also didn’t have the demeanor of someone who was wanting conversation. He looked tired and like he wanted to be left alone. It was a weekday afternoon and I wondered why he was there, if he was no longer teaching.

While Ms. Redgrave was performing a mild striptease on top of a table or desk, I slipped into the back of the theater and sat for a moment to watch my teacher and make sure it was really him.

It was. He was several rows in front of me. There were about three people in the theater, counting me.

He had fallen asleep and was snoring.

I went and sat out in the lobby. It was a bright, sunny day. A big poster for Kenneth Anger’s “Hollywood Babylon” was on display. The film was made in 1972 but Anger’s book was rereleased in 1975 and I suppose that’s why the film was set to play again in the theater. I sat and stared at the poster, and didn’t even consider returning to see it, because it wasn’t the kind of film I’d be interested in seeing.

I also knew that I would never go to that theater again.